Land grabbing on the edge of empire: the longue durée of fee-simple forest lands and indigenous resistance in British Columbia

Abstract

ABSTRACT In 1873, on the edge of empire, over 800,000 hectares of land was reserved as payment for a future rail line on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. This land was granted to the Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway Company in 1887, sold to industrial capital in the twentieth century, and then finance capital in the twenty-first century. Intensive logging has been the constant. Indigenous nations have never relented in their opposition to the rail deal. This article historicizes land grabbing through unpacking the rounds of political-economic and settler control of land that rest on the bedrock of the original colonial enclosure.